WBCA Podcasts

City Talk With Ken Meyer (Bob Furmanek)

Ken Meyer speaks to Bob Furmanek, founder of the 3-D Film Archive. Bob shares how he got interested in 3D movies and film restoration, how he came to be Jerry Lewis's archivist, and the many projects he's worked on restoring, from The Abbott and Costello Show to Bwana Devil, the 1952 film that set off the first 3D film craze. Bob Furmanek also shares his interactions with the likes of Dean Martin and Bud Abbot Jr., and gives tips for how to get started in film restoration. For more information: https://3dfilmarchive.com/

Duration:: 52m
Broadcast on:: 30 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Hello again, everybody. I'm always fascinated by people who like to collect things. And found this gentleman, Bob Furmanak, through our old friend, Stu Fink. And Bob, first of all, finally, we got together and welcome to the program. Well, thank you, Ken. It is a pleasure to be your guest. And I've been very fortunate to collect a number of wonderful things in my life, including some great friends, and I'd have to put Stu Fink right at the top of that list. He's one of the best. I love the man dearly. Now, you got interested in all this material through your dad. That's correct. Yes, sir. Tell us about that. Well, my dad was a home movie maker. He began shooting 8 millimeter in the 1940s. And by the time I came along in the early '60s, he was so deep into it that when he and my mom bought a new home in 1957, they had an unfinished basement. And they designed the basement to be both a second living room and a theater screening room. So as far back as I can remember, the basement always had a screen on one end with a projection room on the other. And I thought that was normal until I started going to school and going to friends places and saying, "Hey, where's your projection room? Where's your screen?" And that's when I started to get an idea, "Okay, this is pretty unique." But yeah, it was all my dad. And he nurtured my interest in it. My brother, Ron, who's five years older than I am, took it to a new level in the 1970s when he got involved with 16 millimeter and had a lot of very interesting experiences, including showing John Lennon, some rare Beatles footage in the early '70s. So it's always been part of my life. And I wouldn't have it any other way. And you also even got an experience doing it when you were in school? Yeah, well, it's very easy to let a passion like this. I almost set up session, but I'll say passion. I always had friends here for movie shows. At that time with eight millimeter, you had things like Castle Films and Black Hawk films, so you could run Abbot and Costello and Laurel and Hardy and Frankenstein and The Wolf Man and all the great horror movies in your basement. You couldn't run the entire movie. These were little seven, eight minute condensations. But when I became interested in 3D, especially, I couldn't wait to share it with friends. And I had some very patient and very understanding teachers who let me, I don't know how I did it, but I talked to them at the letting me host an entire assembly of 3D movies for the eighth grade class, which everyone loved because it got them out of doing actual work. And, you know, they had a good time. And it was fun. It's having a chance to share this material with other people has always been a primary focus for me, you know, from day one. And we're very fortunate now because we've released over 30 restorations on Blu-ray. And now people can enjoy these wonderful films restored in the comfort of their home. There are different conventions that come up through the, in our country. There's an Andy Griffith convention. There's a honeymooner's convention. What about 3D? Yeah, that's a great question because a few weeks ago, the entire 3D film archive restoration team, which is scattered around the country, came together for a National Stereoscopic Association convention, say that three times fast. And it was held, and they do it in a different city every year. This year was in Wichita, Kansas. And we presented our latest restoration of the movie Boana Devil, which kickstarted the whole 3D boom in 1952. And it's wonderful. It's, you know, you talk about a captive audience. It was almost as easy as running 3D movies for kids in school, because here we had a convention with hundreds of people who are just interested in all types of stereoscopic photography and cinematography. So it was a blast. We had a wonderful time. Now there may be people who are listening to this broadcast and saying 3D, what's the difference between that and just going to a theater and watching a movie? Can you explain a little bit about the mechanics of it? Yes, very easily. The best way to describe it is a two dimensional image has height and width. A three dimensional image adds depth. So you get the layers that you see in your normal vision with two eyes. The films were photographed with two cameras, dual 35 millimeter cameras that were interlocked. And this type of three dimensional filmmaking dates back to 1915 when the first test films were shown and exhibited. Very briefly, in the 1920s and early 30s, they were shown with a system called Anaglyphic 3D that used a pair of red and cyan glasses to decode the left and right images on a single strip of film. But then in 1936, Edward Land of the Polaroid Corporation developed polarization filtering. And that had a number of attributes. One, of course, is Polaroid sunglasses, which most people still wear today. But also it enabled filmmakers to use polarization for three dimensional photography and exhibition. And that provided a very discreet left and right side view unlike the red and blue anaglyphic, which combined them. And that was a very high quality 3D image. And that was first shown in the 1930s. And it's not all that different from the 3D you get today. If you go to see a new blockbuster or an avatar, it's just that today it's digital. In the old days, it was analog 35 millimeter. But I guess the short version is to say that really good quality stereo cinematography has been around for over 80 years now. I can remember the first movie I ever went to. I was in the third grade, and it was Walt Disney's "The Littlest Outlaw." Can you remember the first 3D movie you ever saw? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's part of the archivist in me because I've documented all these things. And about 12 years ago, when we put our website up online, I said, "Okay, let me dig through these boxes and document these." The very first 3D movie I saw in a theater was a reissue of two classics from the 1950s. And those were, it came from outer space, a famous science fiction movie based on a red, great, bright, very story, and creature from the black o'gun. And I thought it was wonderful. Of course, at the time, beggars can't be choosers. And this was a case where the two original films that were shown polarized in the 1950s had been converted to the anaglific form of 3D, because it was cheaper and easier to show it. And unfortunately, the quality suffered quite a bit. But as a 14 or 15 year old who was anxious for any kind of 3D movie experience, I thought it was fantastic. And yeah, that was my first movie-going experience for 3D. We are talking with Bob Furmanak here on City Talk. And, Bob, how would you just characterize yourself as a national archivist? Is that- I guess, yeah, I mean, I've done a lot of different things over the decades, writer, producer, and film archivists. And I guess the archivist thing is kind of stuck. The writing gig we did a book, a very detailed book about Bud Abbot and Lou Costello that I co-authored, and I'm very proud of it. But I have a bad habit. I like to eat once in a while. So I didn't really stay in the writing end of things. Producing, I did a lot of stuff with my brother Ron Furmanak at Capitol Records in the early 90s and had some great moments with a lot of legendary artists. I mean, people like, you know, Dean Martin and Keeley Smith and the Andrew Sisters and all. And it was a great gig, but I think archivists and someone who digs and vaults and finds missing films and lost films is something that I'm really proud of doing. So I've kept with that over the years. Now, it's interesting. You mentioned Abbott and Costello. When I was working in radio at WEI, we had Abbott and Costello. Of course, it was Chris Costello and Bud Abbot. But I had a lot of fun saying, you know, joining us are Abbott and Costello on the air. That's wonderful. So that was that was kind of neat. Did you get to know these two people at all? Oh, yeah, very well. I mean, I'm still very good friends with Chris Costello. She's Luke Costello's youngest daughter. And Bud Abbot Jr. was a wonderful, wonderful dear man. And we got to be pretty close. I had moved out to Los Angeles to work for Jerry Lewis in 1984. And one of the first things I did when I got myself situated out there was, I looked up the Abbott and Costello families because as a lifelong fan of their father's work, I wanted to see if they needed any help in getting their family archived together. And I had gold that both estates had a lot of material. They had no idea what they had. And I spent a couple of years cataloging all their films and going through records and transcription discs and everything. And I got to be very close with Bud Abbot Jr. We just clicked and he's gone out sadly, but a very, very dear, sweet man. And I'd like to think he was a lot like his father. Now I can remember when I was little, I was little ones. My mother bought me a 45 record of Bud Abbot and Lucas Sello telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Yes. Yeah. A lot of children had that record. It was very popular and it was a tie in with a movie that they did in 1952, their first color movie. And I'm very happy to say we did a beautiful 70th anniversary restoration of the film a couple of years ago. And one of the things we included on the Blu-ray as a bonus was a copy of that original children's recording, right off the master tape. So it's a very, it's a film that was very close to, especially Lukas Sello, because he produced it. And yeah, it's opportunities like that that just have been really special for myself and our restoration team getting a chance to restore something like Abbot and Kostell's first color movie. Now I've heard a story that there is an interview lurking somewhere of, I think, Lukas Sello interviewing Joe Lewis after a boxing match and saying that he was a bad, bad boy. That's true. Yeah, that was done, I think, in 1940 in Jersey City, New Jersey, Lou was back visiting his friends in Patterson. And Lou was an avid, avid fight fan because he had been a boxer himself as a young man, didn't last very long had it. But yeah, that's great footage. In fact, we found a really, really clean copy of that. And we included that footage as a bonus extra on a restoration we did of another Abbot and Kostell movie called Africa Screams. Now, tell us about some of these movies. But before that, you just kind of glossed over Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, like, that's what I did. Give me an inside scoop on each one of these guys because when I think of Jerry Lewis, I immediately think of muscular dystrophy telethon. When I think of Dean Martin, I think of, of roasts and that's some odd. So take your time and tell us a little bit about working with, with each of these guys. Well, I knew Jerry much better. So let me, let me do Dean first. I grew up a fan. I can still remember Thursday nights at 10 o'clock. My family watching the Dean Martin show on NBC. My brother was a huge fan and had all the hit records. Dean had a really successful string of hits in the mid 60s. In fact, he was outselling his boss at Reprise Records, Frank Sinatra, which was quite, Dean didn't waste time reminding Frank of that. But around 1980, my brother Ron was working on a show called Portrait of a Legend and it was a syndicated show hosted by actor James Darren. And each week they spotlighted a different legend in the music field and word came back to me here in New Jersey that they had gotten approval to do Dean Martin and do an interview with him. So I don't know how I did it, but somehow raised the money to get myself on a plane and I flew out to LA. And with my brother and the crew, we went to Dean's home. And I was so nervous. I'll never forget it. I was literally shaking when I finally had an opportunity to meet him after the interview. And he was so nice to me. I remember he looked up. I was standing to his right next to the couch. And I just stood there petrified staring at this, you know, this legend. And he just said here, come here, sit down, Paolo. And he tapped the chair next to him. So I went and sat down. And I gave him a cassette of an early radio transcription he had done in 1944, even before he teamed up with Jerry Lewis. And he had a short-lived radio show, a 15-minute radio show. So he was super nice to me, a very sweet guy. And I remember he was particularly amused because one of the songs I told him he did on a show was called It's a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin. And that got about the same reaction that you gave. So that was my moment with Dean Martin. And then flash forward about a decade later, my brother Ron was producing at Capitol Records. And the opportunity came up to do a Dean Martin compilation for the collector series. And Ron, my brother, was nice enough to allow me the opportunity to kind of compile the collection. And the idea was that it would, for the first time ever, put all of his charted capital songs in one collection. That had never been done before, ironically. And it was going to be a 20-track CD. And he had 19 charted records. So we had a spot to fill. And both my brother and I were really fans of a recording, a pretty obscure recording he had done in 1960 for the movie Oceans 11. And there was a song called Ain't That a Kick in the Head, Nelson Riddle Arrangement. It had not been in print since the late 1960s when Capitol put it on a budget album on their pickwick subsidiary label. So we threw that track on there as a bonus. And it's like, okay, here, maybe people will like hearing Ain't That a Kick in the Head for the first time. And it took off. A few years later, Martin Scorsese used it in a film and then another film and in another film. And it's now become a Dean Martin standard that at the time we put it on the CD, nobody remembered it. It was very obscure. So that was a wonderful experience. And we had a great relationship with Capitol. And I had pitched the idea of taking his second album in 1955, which was called Swingin' Down Yonder. And it was an album of Dixieland songs. And I said, why don't we take this 12 track album and add all the other Dixieland style arrangements he did for Capitol. There were about seven or eight other tracks in the catalog. And they gave me approval. We put the release together. And at that time, Dean had kind of retired. It was a few years after his son died. And he was kind of in a bad place and lost a lot of the spark that he had in his life. And we found out that almost every night of the week he went to a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and he dined alone. He just, you know, like I said, he was sort of checked out at that point. So I went with a friend to the restaurant and you always knew Dean was going to come in because they would shut off the music that they were playing in the background and they would put on one of his albums. And we're sitting there and all of a sudden a Dean Martin track comes on and it's okay. I guess we're in love. Dean's coming in. And he did and he sat in the big booth by himself. And I went to the major dean. I said, you know, look, I don't have an appointment. This is not nothing is scheduled, but I work for Capitol Records. And we've got this compilation. I would really love to give one to Mr. Martin if that's okay. So he went to the booth and he had a few words with Dean and he came back and he said, absolutely, please, you know, come by and say hello. So I had a nice little moment with Dean again at that point and he told me he always loved Dixieland music and he smiled when he saw the CD and he even autographed a copy for me. And it was just a great moment. But it on the flip, you know, it was a little sad because he didn't look well. He had lost a lot of weight. And, you know, I just hope that maybe seeing that some of his work was getting reissued in this new digital format, you know, maybe it made him feel a little bit better about his legacy and his career. So that's my Dean Martin story. Didn't he do some other work for another company after Capitol? Yeah, well, he was with Capitol from 1948 to about 61. And then Frank Sinatra started reprise records. So he moved over to reprise and ironically had the biggest hits of his career, things like everybody loves somebody in Houston. Yep, exactly. A big string right at the height of Beatlemania, you know, he was getting hits on the pop chart, which was pretty wild. So yeah, that was a great experience. Now Jerry Lewis, I had also grown up loving his films and was a big fan. And the summer of 1982, my friend and I were vacationing in California and my brother was working at Warner Brothers at the time on a Elvis Presley documentary called This Is Elvis. And they had their office on the lot. And we went there for lunch and then we were walking around the backlot and literally turned a corner and see somebody in the distance on the New York Street shooting a film. And I said, okay, that's kind of interesting. Let's go up and see. And as we're getting closer, I see a car parked on the lot and the Jerry Lewis logo is on the dashboard. And I thought that's kind of odd. Why? Why is that on his dashboard? Well, as we got a little bit closer, we found the person shooting the movie was Jerry Lewis. And he was shooting a film called Smorgasboard. And they were doing a pretty complicated scene where his stunt double flies through a pint glass window. And flips over a car and lands on the middle of a road and nearly gets hit by two or three cars. So it was a fascinating sequence to watch them block and film. And we were there all afternoon. Nobody told us to go away. We kept our distance respectfully. But I recognized Jerry's manager who was Joe Stabil. And he had been with Jerry since the late 40s when his brother Dick Stabil was the Martin Lewis band leader and a ranger. And I went up and introduced myself to Mr. Stabil and asked him if it's okay if we watched the filming. He said, absolutely. And Joe was a very outgoing guy. And he said, you know, what are you doing here? Are you working? And I explained we were visiting with my brother and everything. And I told him I was from New Jersey. And he said, he said, well, why don't we, you know, when we have a moment, we'll introduce you to Jerry. And you didn't have to twist my arm. You know, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. So during a break, he brought us over and he said, Jerry, these guys are from New Jersey wanted to say hello. And the very first thing Jerry said to me, he said, you're from New Jersey and you're telling people. And we just we collect he was interested that we wanted to watch him work. Jerry always liked open sets even back in the 50s and 60s. So he said, you know, we're moving over to the old Selznick lot in Culver City tomorrow. If you'd like to come there and watch this work, please do. And we did. And I think the second or third day we watched him film the scene with Milton Burl, which was incredible. And anyway, just to tighten up the story, my brother knew that one of Jerry's master tapes was at NBC in Burbank. And it was in danger of being destroyed. So we helped secure that show for Jerry. And he knew then that we knew our stuff, that we were serious, that we wanted to help preserve and archive work. And it took about two years, but I finally convinced him he needed to hire me to be his archivist. So I remember he told me I would I would see him anytime he came to New York. And I remember he told me he said, look, if you find yourself out in Los Angeles, you've got a job. So I did what any normal 23-year-old would do. I quit my job in New York. And I flew out to LA. And I called Joe Stabil. And I said, okay, I'm here ready to begin to work. And Joe laughed. And he said, okay, you know, come to the office, we'll give you the keys to the warehouse and go at it. And I did. And I spent the next two years working for him full time. I, you know, as you're telling that story, I'm sitting here and going through my head is Jerry Lewis singing rockaboy, my baby, with a female. He was he was a good performer. Jerry was incredible. One of the things that I was so blessed to have an opportunity was watch him behind the scenes at work. And I don't think there was anything he couldn't do. You know, if he was on a set, he knew the cameras, he knew the lenses, he knew the lighting. I remember famously, he had cards and something like two dozen unions in the motion picture industry. But, you know, a good singer, a great dancer, he could handle himself really well with music and had an instinctive rhythm. He could tap dancing, he could hold his own with, you know, if you remember, like the four step brothers and people like that, he had nothing to be ashamed of when it came to his dancing skills. Most famously in his movie Cinderella, he does a really complex dance down this massive staircase, something like 30 or 40 steps. And he does it to a Count Basie tune. So he was an incredible man. To this day, I still have to remind myself how fortunate I was to see him at work like that. Anybody who knows about Martin and Lewis knows about the breakup that occurred. In fact, I understand and I have not read it, but there is a new book that may not be new anymore by a gentleman named Michael Hague, who wrote a new book about Martin and Lewis. Did Jerry ever talk to you about any of that? Not really. I never pursued it. It was, you know, obviously, it's like the day the clown cried. It was a very personal, very sensitive thing. And I figured if he wanted to talk with me about it, it would come up. But I can tell you that I, about 15 or so years ago, I started finding information, well, actually, even before that, but I started putting information together. You know, the myth had been that Dean and Jerry didn't see each other for 20 years after they split up and had a big reunion on the muscular dystrophy telephone in 1976 that was orchestrated by Frank Sinatra. But truthfully, they had seen quite a bit of each other over those 20 years, including some very public appearances. For instance, in 1960, Jerry was in Florida doing a movie called The Bell Boy and they ran late and Dean was playing at the Sands in Las Vegas and Dean stayed an extra night or two because Jerry was delayed in coming back and Jerry went to his closing night performance and they actually went up on stage and did one of their old routines in 1960. So that's just one example. They had, you know, about eight or 10 reunions during that period. But after the very public one on live television in 1976, they did not reconnect as friends and that didn't happen until, I think it was 1988 or '89 when Dean Martin's son tragically died in a plane crash and Jerry went to the funeral and a lot of people don't know, but Jerry was his son's godfather and Jerry went there and he didn't didn't make his presence known. He stayed in the back and Dean heard about that afterwards and got him on the phone. He was very touched by it and that moment is what reconnected them as friends and they stayed in touch throughout the rest of Dean's life. And I believe Jerry said they spoke every week and Dean would call him preacher because Jerry was always trying to lecture him, take care of yourself, get to a doctor, you know, trying to snap him out of his funk. So it's a nice, you think about two people that were as close as brothers and really best friends for maybe not the entire 10 years. They were a team but maybe about six or seven of those years. They were as close as two men could be and then had a big falling out and it's nice to know that at the end of Dean's life that they were able to reconnect as friends again. Somewhere and I don't know where I heard it that Sinatra had a better knowledge of music and musicians than Dean Martin. Is that true, do you think? Oh yeah. Yeah, Dean, you know, Frank took the whole art of music and recording and orchestrations to a whole new level. Dean, Dean, I think his attitude was very loose. You know, he didn't get deep into the technical end of things. Even when he was working on a film set, more often than not, he'd be out, you know, with his golf club taking shots and you know, call me when you need me, that type of thing. And he was always very professional. And I had a chance when we were doing our working capital to listen to a lot of the recording session tapes, the master tapes. And you know, Dean was loose. He was a lot of fun. One of the best dryest sense of humor of anyone that you'll hear from that period. So the musicians loved him. And but I don't think he took it nearly as seriously as Frank Sinatra did. I think very few performers did really. How do you like the performance scene today? I can't get into it at all and I'm a big nostalgia buff and love the old stuff. Nothing new. Is it wrong to feel that way? And because I don't mean to discredit performers, but nothing seems as good. Well, you know, I'll tell you, Ken, I'm in my early sixties and I grew up in an era where music was a lot different than what's popular today. But one of the areas that I think you might want to explore and other people is YouTube. During COVID, like everyone else, I was locked in the house and shut down and I just began surfing on YouTube. And I found some incredibly talented, wonderful, wonderful young artists making new music and original music. And these are people that are doing recordings in their home. And you know, they're not, they don't have the money to go into a studio and pay hundreds of bucks an hour to do it. They've got very good gear and they're doing home recordings. There's a lot of really talented people out there. They're just not, you know, getting major record contracts and getting that kind of exposure. But I'll send you some links. I think you'll be very surprised to see the level of talent out there from a lot of really, really good young musicians. Now, I enjoy nostalgia to the degree that I sat here the other day for a couple of hours and watched some of the old Danny Thomas television shows. Man, they were great stuff. And Thomas was such a great performer. And I don't, like I said, I don't see that happening today. Well, it's just, I think it's a different time. And you know, the people, the performers that we grew up with, you mentioned, you know, Jerry Lewis just being able to sing and dance and act and direct. You know, they also, they learned by doing, they went through the hard knocks of starting in the clubs and working your way up. You know, Abbot and Costello is their prime example. You know, they started in Burlesque, which was about the lowest form of mass entertainment you could you can come from in the 20s and 30s. But they built built up from there. And when they started working as a team, they perfected these great routines that they did. And they went to radio in 1936 or 30. Well, no, they teamed in 36. They went to radio in 38 on the Kate Smith show. By 1939, they were on Broadway in a show called Streets of Paris. Within a year, they had their first movie contract. And by 1942, they were the top box office attraction in the, in the country. You know, that, that was a different time and a different, a different world that doesn't, you know, doesn't exist now, really. There's so much of the things with TikTok and all that. It's, you know, you can, you can post a video and become a viral sensation in 24 hours. And I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's just maybe you don't have the opportunity to learn as you climb the ladder as you did years ago. As time passes, do you find that there are more people interested in archivists, archivalists, if that's the right word, or less as time goes on? Well, it's, you know, it is, it's, it's an interesting question because when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, old movies were still very much a thing, not only in, in the repertory theaters, but on television and film festival. I remember even my high school running old movies on weekends and you'd go there and it'd be a few hundred of your fellow students at a, at a show. That kind of went away when home video became a thing. But as it's evolved now and what I'm seeing with, well, I can give you two examples with Jerry Lewis. We've started doing a yearly event at the Roxy Tribeca Theater in New York on Jerry's birthday and Owen Klein, who's a wonderfully talented filmmaker and actor. He and I sort of co-host this and we're drawing a lot of younger people, surprisingly so. And just this past year, we did a double feature of the disorderly orderly and the gay ship boy. And they did really well with a young audience. And we're seeing the same thing with our 3D restorations because whenever possible, we try to have a big screen premiere showing. And in New York, it's usually at the film forum. We've done things in Chicago and other parts of the country. And it's a mixed audience. You'll get the older folks who, well, maybe they didn't see these movies new because that was 71 years ago and they'd be quite elderly. But people that have always heard or read about the films, but you get a good sampling of younger people, especially college age people that I've had. This is going to sound like a cliche, but I had more than one college age person at a show say, I thought 3D began with Avatar. And it's like, well, okay, no, it goes back a few years earlier. And they're blown away by how good the films look. And the movies are getting reappraised and everything. So I think there's always going to be in the audience for good vintage entertainment. It's just not the same and maybe not as accessible as it was when we were kids. Tell me about how you got hooked up with my buddy or our buddy Stu. Oh, Stu, thank my gosh. Well, where did we begin? We only have until the hour. We were doing, I've known Stu for a number of years casually. We would see each other at different film events and all that. But a few years ago, myself and my colleague, Jack Thixton, began a pretty massive restoration effort of the iconic Abbott and Gestell TV show. This was the one that Jerry Seinfeld cited as his inspiration. And it's got a great ensemble cast. And the shows had not been preserved properly or even restored. And the versions that were being sold and shown around different streaming services were scans that dated back to the 1980s. And we knew the shows could look a lot better. So we went back to the original 35 millimeter camera negatives, the film that was actually in the can when they were filming it. And we did all new 4K scans and restoration of the 52 episodes. And for the first season, we wanted to get a lot of people on board that were fans that could do a commentary track because on DVDs and Blu-rays, especially a lot of buyers enjoy a supplemental audio track with commentary about the program. And Stu Fink was natural for that because he knew the material. He was a lifelong fan. And he's got a great voice. So, you know, everything came together. And he was wonderful to work with. And I didn't have any visits to the hospital getting his track done. So it was a very positive experience. And we had to cut some corners when we did season two for a variety of reasons. But Stu was one of the few people that we were able to bring back for a second commentary track. So I think the world of him, he's a remarkable guy and you're fortunate to have him in your area and do work with him. I will never doubt that he and I worked for quite a few years at WBZ Radio. And there's nobody better both in production and to have as a good buddy to go out and have Chinese food with them, Stu. Well, and the nice thing was Stu, I'm not a smoker, but I can spend a few hours with him. And for the next week, everybody's asking me if I took up cigars. I said, no, no, no. I was just with Stu Fink for a while. I think the only other person that loves cigars more than Stu would have been Lou Castello. You never see a picture of Lou offset without his cigar. But, no, he's a wonderful guy. We kid each other a lot and I'm very fortunate to know him. A lot of times people will talk about great moments in sports or whatever and they'll come back and say, you know, baseball was better than it is now or the old days were better than it is today. Do you tend to agree with that as far as movies and performances are concerned? Well, that would be my own personal opinion, of course, but I gravitate towards older content. And I think that's just sort of natural. I'm 63 now. So, you know, I'm not in the choice demographic for the new product they're putting out. But I will put a little asterisk on that and say that in the last few years, I've been very fortunate to get to know and become good friends with some college students in the area. And they're actually doing some work for us on projects, which is fantastic because these are super talented people and it's very wonderful to see them start to come into their own as filmmakers and documentary filmmakers. And they're exposing me to a lot of newer things that I may not seek out in terms of film and music. And you know what? There's an awful lot of good stuff out there, Ken. It's just getting exposed to it and maybe lining yourself with people that are willing to say, hey, give this film a shot or give this track, give this artist a listen. And yeah, it's I'll never stop looking back to the things I love and grew up with. But I definitely have a very open mind to what's being done today and finding new talent to enjoy. What are you working on now? Right at this moment, we are juggling about half a dozen restoration projects. Our latest release through Keena Lorber is the movie "Buana Devil", which was the first 3D movie in 1952 in color. That kick started the very short-lived 3D fad. And we have a new release with Bayview Entertainment, a movie called "Domo Arigato" from 1972 that was made by Archibler, who also made "Buana Devil". And it was his final movie and it had a very limited release in theaters. So this will be sort of unofficially its first ride release. And then for Keena Lorber, who's our primary distributor, we're finishing up restoration on a wonderful 1953 movie called "The Glass Web" with Edward G. Robinson, John Forsyth, and Kathleen Hughes. And it's directed by Jack Arnold, who did things like "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "The Incredible Shrinking Man". And it's a story about a murder. It takes place at a TV studio and a terrific widescreen 3D movie. So we've got that one coming up probably by the end of this year from Keena Lorber. So we're doing well. Thank goodness. There's a lot of interest in vintage 3D and we've got a lot of titles in the pipeline. So I keep telling our team, take your vitamins because there's a lot of work ahead. Every year I can't help but think about Jerry Lewis and the Labor Day telethon, which is coming up as a matter of fact this weekend. Does that happen to you once in a while? Oh my goodness, yeah. When I worked for Mr. Lewis, I went to see the telethon live quite a few years and it was a very emotional and hard-wrenching experience. And I can tell you from just seeing it firsthand, his involvement and commitment and love and passion, not only for these children but their families, it was a year-round way of life for him. And you just can't help but not be moved by what he did. And I think the total of money raised for children and their families with most of your history is $2 billion, which is quite remarkable. And I understand Mr. Lewis to some people could be. A lot of people didn't get to know him as I did and they don't quite understand who he was as a human being. But I always say if you want to really understand where his heart was, look at what he did for the children with muscular dystrophy. And he never made a penny doing that. In fact, he spent a lot of his own money sometimes flying around the country. He would get word that a child was very sick and he would fly there to be and visit with the children and their families. That's a very, very special human being that can do something like that. And quite a remarkable man. And yes, Labor Day is every year, all of us think about Jerry Lewis and what he did. There may be people listening to this for the first time and saying, hey, this sounds great. What would you advise someone who says that and says, geez, I'd love to do some of this stuff. Well, you know, there's opportunities now. There are several schools around the world that you can go to and get a degree in film restoration work. I mean, most famously in this country would be Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Go to the Selznick School is a great organization. There's tremendous tools available to anyone that's interested to start to learn to do the work yourself and do it at home. There are things that you're capable of achieving just with the software and tools that are out there that if you're good at what you do and you don't mind very, very tedious work, and I won't lie, it can be very tedious because many times you're taking these seven and eight decades old films and breaking them down a frame at a time and going through them to clean up and do alignment. But if you can do that type of work and you're good at it, there's an opportunity for you to get involved with film restoration. And you can start putting together demo reels and pitching them to the different labels that do these type of specialized releases. And you know, maybe if the stars align and you're not only talented, but you get a lucky break or two, you might get a job at an archive or a studio and and then you'll actually make money doing it. You know, but I remember a long time ago when we were going to do our Evan Costello book, Leonard Walton gave us some great advice and he said don't write the book to make money. Write the book because it's something that you need to do and there's a story you want to tell. And I think that applies to film restoration as well. Don't get into it thinking that, okay, this is going to be a, you know, a great career in six figure income. That could happen. But but don't let profit be your motivation, you know, do it because it's maybe what your heart tells you you're good at and what you should be doing. And we're very fortunate because we've got the best the best team in the world. I mentioned Jack the extent. Greg Kintz out in Indiana, there's there's nobody better when it comes to restoring these vintage 3D films. But we're all driven by just the passion to see the material restored and preserved. And you know, sometimes there's there's good money to be made too. But don't let that be your your primary motivation. Well, I want to thank you for giving almost an hour of your time to to doing this. This has all been very fascinating. Do you have any closing remarks you'd like to say to our audience before we wrap it up as they say? Well, I would just thank you can for reaching out and you're interested in what we do and giving me an opportunity to tell the story a little bit. I had a wonderful time and if anybody really wants to go down a bit of a deep dive, our website's a good tool, which is 3dfilmarchive.com. And there are multiple pages on there that show what we do and what's coming up with our restorations. But I appreciate this opportunity. It was wonderful. And still was right. He said, you're going to have a good time with Ken. And I sure did. Well, I feel the same way. I thoroughly enjoy this. And you're good. There's no doubt about it. You're good. You don't get a yes or no means. I like that. Well, I've got a few of those where you have to give yes or no's. And it was nice to have a chance to really chat a little bit. I enjoyed that. I appreciate that. And thank you again. And that will do it for another edition of City Talk.